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Fast Food Giants Continue to Attract Kids With Toys and Movie Tie-ins

by Carolyn Buchanan on September 16, 2014

Carolyn Buchanan

About the Author

B.C. (before children), Carolyn was trained as a journalist — a generalist journalist. Now as a parent, she experiences news differently. What was once an item of passing interest, i.e. "Toy Train Runs on Lead Paint" or "Midnight Release Planned for Latest Power Rangers Movie" now consumes her life. Still she trains her eye to find the family relevance in everything new, and that's what she endeavors to share with you here. As a parent, and a writer for What to Expect, she will be your family-news filter (with a personal twist).

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WhatToExpect.com supports Word of Mom as a place to share stories and highlight the many perspectives and experiences of pregnancy and parenting. However, the opinions expressed in this section are those of individual writers and do not reflect the views of Heidi Murkoff of the What to Expect brand.

Summary: In an effort to reduce childhood obesity, fast-food companies agreed to shift marketing campaigns for kids from toy giveaways to the food itself. But a new study shows that not everyone is complying.

Ever wonder what attracts kids most to fast food restaurants? Is it the salty French fries? Sugary drinks? Indoor playrooms, bright lights, or general ambiance? It's none of the above, according to a new study published in the online journal PloS One. Advertisers believe that the number one draw has nothing to do with food — it's the toy giveaways and movie tie-ins that do the trick.

The study, How Television Fast Food Marketing Aimed at Children Compares with Adult Advertisements, was funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation through its Healthy Eating Research program.

"Fast-food companies use free toys and popular movies to appeal to kids, and their ads are much more focused on promotions, brands, and logos — not on the food," said lead author James Sargent, MD, professor of pediatrics at the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth.

Although leaders of the food and beverage industry have pledged to abide by marketing guidelines set by the Children's Advertising Review Unit (CARU), which include a provision stating that food — not toys or other promotions — should be the primary focus of ads directed at kids, the study shows that some fast food giants (McDonald's and Burger King in particular) have not made the shift.

Sargent and his colleagues examined all nationally televised ads for children's meals by leading fast food restaurants for one year. They compared ads aimed at kids to ads aimed at adults from the same companies to look at whether pledges for food marketing to children had been implemented.

"Although some of the foods presented in children's meals could be characterized as 'healthy,' little emphasis was placed on actually showing the food compared with adult advertisements from the same companies," the researchers wrote in the study. "Toy premiums and tie-ins were presented prominently."

"Given health concerns about obesity and its relation to fast-food consumption, enhanced oversight of fast-food marketing to children at the local, state and federal level is needed to align advertising to children with health promotion efforts and existing principles of honest and fair marketing to children," the study's authors wrote.

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